1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method for autonomously controlling the supply of electric power to the inside of the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in the field of computer system techniques, a power control technique has been developed for stopping the supply of electric power to the inside of the apparatus while there is no process, and resuming the supply of electric power instantaneously when the process is required such as when an input operation for the apparatus is performed, thereby reducing the power consumption on standby.
For instance, in a portable apparatus such as a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), if no operation is performed for a fixed period of time, the apparatus automatically transits to a low power consumption mode in which the CPU operates at a low frequency and the supply of power to the peripheral circuits is stopped, and if any operation is performed, the apparatus returns to a normal state to perform the process, thereby reducing the power consumption on standby.
Also, a technique concerning a power saving method for stopping the power supply while the device is not in use was described in JP-A-2004-206530.
JP-A-2004-206530 is an example of related art.